SATIRICAL AND HUMOROUS

POEMS.

ODE TO THE WOODS AND FORESTS.

BY ONE OF THE BOARD.

1828.

LET other bards to groves repair,

Where linnets strain their tuneful throats, Mine be the Woods and Forests, where

The Treasury pours its sweeter notes.

No whispering winds have charms for me,
Nor zephyr's balmy sighs I ask;

To raise the wind for Royalty

Be all our Sylvan zephyr's task!

And, 'stead of crystal brooks and floods,
And all such vulgar irrigation,

Let Gallic rhino through our Woods
Divert its "course of liquid-ation."

Ah, surely, Virgil knew full well
What Woods and Forests ought to be,
When, sly, he introduc'd in hell

His guinea-plant, his bullion-tree* :—

Nor see I why, some future day,

When short of cash, we should not send Our H-rr-s down-he knows the way— To see if Woods in hell will lend.

Long may ye flourish, sylvan haunts,
Beneath whose "branches of expense"
Our gracious K―g gets all he wants,-
Except a little taste and sense.

Long, in your golden shade reclin'd,
Like him of fair Armida's bowers,
May W-ll-n some wood-nymph find,
To cheer his dozenth lustrum's hours;

* Called by Virgil, botanically, "species auri frondentis."

To rest from toil the Great Untaught, And soothe the pangs his warlike brain Must suffer, when, unus'd to thought,

It tries to think, and—tries in vain.

Oh long may Woods and Forests be Preserv'd, in all their teeming graces, To shelter Tory bards, like me,

Who take delight in Sylvan places! *

*Tu facis, ut silvas, ut amem loca

OVID.

STANZAS FROM THE BANKS OF

THE SHANNON.*

"Take back the virgin page."

MOORE's Irish Melodies.

1828.

No longer, dear V-sey, feel hurt and uneasy

At hearing it said by thy Treasury brother, That thou art a sheet of blank paper, my V-sey,

And he, the dear, innocent placeman, another. †

For, lo, what a service we, Irish, have done thee; Thou now art a sheet of blank paper no more; By St. Patrick, we've scrawl'd such a lesson upon thee

As never was scrawl'd upon foolscap before.

* These verses were suggested by the result of the Clare election, in the year 1828, when the Right Honourable W. Vesey Fitzgerald was rejected, and Mr. O'Connell returned.

+ Some expressions to this purport, in a published letter of one of these gentlemen, had then produced a good deal of

amusement.